Recent Posts

951

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by Shades on April 26, 2016, 03:05 PM »

Own Your Self: Master Your Character, Rise To Any Challenge, Find True Inner Peace (free until April 28th)

The Maiden Voyage of the Destiny Unknown (free until the end of the week)

Car Buying on a shoestring budget: for college kids and single parents who need reliable transportation (Auto Tips Book 1)

-panzer (April 25, 2016, 08:06 AM)

It would be really helpful if you'd include the titles of the books at the very least, if not a short description of what they're about so we can tell if we're interested or not. Just because a book is free doesn't mean we're interested.

And clicking links can be "dangerous" due to trackers. I don't want to click a mystery link to a product and then start seeing ads or other "you might be interested in this" links everywhere on the internet related to a product/subject that I have no interest in.

-Deozaan (April 25, 2016, 02:58 PM)

Very much this.  Which in turn leads to me ignoring the post, which might actually be a good recommendation.

-wraith808 (April 25, 2016, 05:58 PM)

Fixed it for you... 

952

Living Room / Re: Be prepared against ransomware viruses..

« Last post by Shades on April 23, 2016, 07:01 PM »

Although a bit far fetched for some...but I have no trouble imagining data stored in your cloud solution could be affected by such a virus/malware too, especially when you use the syncing capabilities provided by your cloud solution.

As Stoic Joker said...there is no substitute for an offline backup (at the time of infection). 

953

General Software Discussion / Re: Homeland Security warns Windows PC users to uninstall Quicktime

« Last post by Shades on April 23, 2016, 06:48 PM »

PotPloyer, my personal favorite videoplayer (and part the "trinity"), does play audio and it reduces the size of it's window considerably to show you the necessary buttons and info about the track currently playing.

Having said that, fOdder's recommendation to play audio is better. Some like their tools to include "everything and the kitchen sink", some like tools that do one job and do it well.

Try out any of the "trinity" of video-players, you hardly go wrong with any. Each of them do not require you to install codecs at all to play video's or audio, no matter the format of the video/audio file. Personally I enjoy using the foobar2000 music player, mainly because it sounds excellent, but it also gives you options to add plug-ins to complement the already available tools and you can change its interface to how you like it.

954

Living Room / Re: anyone else getting DNS error for easeus.com?

« Last post by Shades on April 18, 2016, 11:06 AM »

It is software that is able to talk to hardware on a low level, possibly creating a mess that the IT department can spend hours to fix. Especially in the hands of a user accessing the network through an account that is not meant to do this kind of tasks.

Looking from that angle I can understand the IT department. Still, if the purpose of visiting that website is research, than the block is a bit of a draconian move on their part.

955

General Software Discussion / Re: Homeland Security warns Windows PC users to uninstall Quicktime

« Last post by Shades on April 18, 2016, 10:23 AM »

If the holy trinity (PotPlayer, VideoLAN or Media Plyer Classic) doesn't play a video...that video wasn't meant to be seen. 

Seriously, who installs the quicktime garbage on Windows anymore?

956

Shareware Discounts for Members / Re: Searching for "SAPIEN free PrimalForms Community Edition"

« Last post by Shades on April 16, 2016, 07:10 AM »

Here is a helpful link that gets you up to speed quickly (creating GUIs with PowerShell, I mean).

957

General Software Discussion / Re: MYSQL code editor for woRking with a template file

« Last post by Shades on April 15, 2016, 05:41 PM »

MS-SQL and Oracle have tools that can convert your .sql file into a schematic drawing. I'm sure the other enterprise DB solution makers have similar tools available for their DB's too. If that is what you ask.

For MySQL I think options are quite limited. You might have some luck by using the latest and greatest version of MySQL Workbench (version 6 and up). That is a pretty potent piece of software for working with MySQL databases.

Not sure about your NRNM method ("No Read No Manual") though... Usually by spending time reading a manual, you'll become (much) more efficient in what you are trying to accomplish.   

958

Shareware Discounts for Members / Re: Searching for "SAPIEN free PrimalForms Community Edition"

« Last post by Shades on April 15, 2016, 05:27 PM »

Tried this as well, also without luck. Using the same as 4wd: Visual Studio Express (2013 Desktop Express in my case). This is actually very handy for whipping up an interface using drag-n-drop and XAML code is automatically generated for you. The VS text editor lets you tweak whatever you like. When you are finished with the interface, remove the 'x:' part from the object names you used in your GUI and you can use the remaining code directly in PowerShell.

If you think to go this way, install Visual Studio 2015 Community edition instead. Although free to use, you are required to register your copy with Microsoft. The software doesn't indicate this is necessary, but you can only work with this tool for 30 days if you don't register. This problem and its solution is well documented on the internet, so I am sure you'll find it if you don't want to register. The full iso for VS 2015 Community is almost 6GByte in size, which was quite a burden for my 1MBit/sec connection. But the web-installer wasn't that much faster. There are a lot of requirements for installing VS and downloading whatever you are missing can add up quickly.

959

Living Room / Re: anyone else getting DNS error for easeus.com?

« Last post by Shades on April 09, 2016, 08:37 AM »

For the web version of the command: 216.92.151.227
Visit easeus.com using the IP number.

960

Living Room / Re: I am fed up with skype but is there an alternative?

« Last post by Shades on April 08, 2016, 06:20 PM »

Alternatives a plenty. Go to the site: http://alternativeto.net/ and type Skype in its search option.

Don't expect the person you want to communicate with to change to whatever client you decide to use. Even when the alternative is better, people don't want the hassle to recreate their contact list(s) in this new client, just for you and you alone.

You would better go after finding out why your Skype connection is bad and how you can improve. Google is your friend. Perhaps Bing too.

961

Living Room / Re: anyone else getting DNS error for easeus.com?

« Last post by Shades on April 08, 2016, 09:12 AM »

Looks like something is going wrong with the DNS server(s) you are currently using. If you are allowed to change the DNS servers in your internet configuration settings, use one or more DNS servers from the following list of free publicly available DNS servers:

Provider                   Primary DNS Server   Secondary DNS Server
Level3                   209.244.0.3            209.244.0.4
OpenDNS                 208.67.222.222             208.67.220.220
Verisign                 64.6.64.6                64.6.65.6
Google                   8.8.8.8                   8.8.4.4
DNS.WATCH           84.200.69.80           84.200.70.40
Comodo Secure DNS   8.26.56.26                  8.20.247.20
OpenDNS Home        208.67.222.222        208.67.220.220
DNS Advantage        156.154.70.1           156.154.71.1
Norton ConnectSafe   199.85.126.10        199.85.127.10
GreenTeamDNS       81.218.119.11        209.88.198.133
SafeDNS                195.46.39.39          195.46.39.40
OpenNIC                50.116.23.211           192.99.240.129
SmartViper                   208.76.50.50          208.76.51.51
Dyn                       216.146.35.35         216.146.36.36
FreeDNS                37.235.1.174          37.235.1.177
Alternate DNS         198.101.242.72        23.253.163.53
Yandex.DNS            77.88.8.8               77.88.8.1
censurfridns.dk       91.239.100.100   
Hurricane Electric    74.82.42.42   
puntCAT                 109.69.8.51   

Edit:
Sorry, I copy-pasted this list from here.

Edit 2:
http://public-dns.info/ ...for more DNS servers, sorted per country.

962

Living Room / Re: anyone else getting DNS error for easeus.com?

« Last post by Shades on April 08, 2016, 07:28 AM »

Changes may have happened to the eassus domain that haven't propagated (yet) to the DNS server that actually "translates" the internet for you(r computer). Usually DNS servers at places of education (universities and colleges) are quickly updated though. Assuming you use your own laptop at this location to connect to the web, there might be some networking policy in play. Publicly accessible computers at a library for example, might also not be the first in line to receive the latest DNS info as fast as their main institutional DNS servers do.

When I was responsible for creating and aggregating content for a Dutch ISP around 2000, according to the Linux admin(s) working there at that time, DNS changes could easily take 24 hours to propagate. I think it is safe to assume that this remains true even today. While I suspect root DNS servers (at RIPE and similar organizations) might have become faster over the years, it will be balanced out by the significantly increased amount of DNS entries to keep track of.

963

Living Room / Re: PC WILL NOT BOOT TO WIN 7 PRO WITH USB PLUGGED IN

« Last post by Shades on April 06, 2016, 08:01 PM »

A cheaper and/or easier project would be to convert your keyboard and/or mouse to the old, but reliable PS/2 port(s) your PC is likely to have...in case you use a wired keyboard and/or mouse. Now you can disable legacy USB in your BIOS, while you have a fully functional keyboard/mouse during the boot procedure.

964

General Software Discussion / Re: Software to allow Local testing of a website code while monitoring activity

« Last post by Shades on April 04, 2016, 09:37 PM »

XAMMP is my favorite tool for creating a quick environment to work on websites locally without VM. Perhaps Karma or HTTP Monitor (in combination with Firebug) are modern day equivalent tools to help out with with the other part of your request?

With Karma, I'm afraid you will need a VM. Creating a VM based on Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS that is configured as a LAMP server isn't difficult, won't take long and doesn't take up much space in either RAM or hard disk storage. With such a VM you can quickly add Karma to it and start working, because Karma isn't available for Windows.

I think you mean a tool like DOM Inspector or DOM Explorer is what you are looking for.

965

Living Room / Re: PC WILL NOT BOOT TO WIN 7 PRO WITH USB PLUGGED IN

« Last post by Shades on April 04, 2016, 05:05 PM »

From the images you provided I see you have a PC with an older AMI BIOS. More modern versions of BIOS and/or UEFI allow for much more fine-grained control about which USB connected devices can be disabled at starting the PC.

Mouses and keyboards that are connected through USB have no need to use for the latest incarnation of the USB protocol and still chug along with the lowest version of USB they can get away with (which usually means USB 1.1). That USB standard is more than adequate for those devices, mouses only send relative position data, clicks etc. Even a fast typist cannot type fast enough to saturate the data bandwidth provided by an USB 1.1 port.

The 'USB Legacy' option in your BIOS apparently means that USB 1.1 devices are disabled at boot.

Modern versions of BIOS/UEFI are able to distinct between USB devices and allow keyboard/mouse to be enabled while other USB devices are not.
 
Not sure if there is even a BIOS upgrade for your specific motherboard model available that gives you more fine-grained control over USB devices. Upgrading a BIOS isn't very difficult and doesn't take much time. However, if anything goes wrong during this BIOS upgrade procedure, there is a distinct possibility you brick your computer.

Some older PC's have some kind of backup BIOS chip on their motherboard, but most PC's only come with one of those chips and most are soldered directly on the motherboard.
Mess it up and you can look forward to time-consuming and (very) costly repairs. If you are lucky you can get a new BIOS chip from the manufacturer or you need to hunt for
a similar chip on a spare/(not too) broken motherboard (exact same make and model as the one you have). Replacing the old BIOS chip with the new one requires some expertise as well.

This is the option in the BIOS/UEFI from my 3 year old PC that would resolve your problem.

Unfortunately your BIOS doesn't seem to have it.

966

Living Room / Re: What Killed the Middle Class?

« Last post by Shades on April 02, 2016, 05:26 PM »

[To the basement, here we go...]
If you want a government to attain (and maintain!) a standard of living for every citizen it serves...you'll need to get your head around the fact that constant taxing of all the population is necessary. And there are things that are better run by government than commercial market parties. Ideally, government should only have to check what it's citizens and companies/cooperations are doing day to day to keep the society it serves running as smoothly as it can for as long as it can.

In the real world however, commercial parties try to game the system set up by the government on a much grander scale than the citizens of that government deserve or bargained for. And on the other end corruption and plain stupidity is strife in government, upsetting citizens and companies/coorperations alike.

If you really want lower taxes, government should be lean. But government should also be able to get their allotted taxes without citizens and companies/cooperations "screwing the pooch". This is called a "live and let live" mentality.

From what I gather through news-outlets, US republicans (& companies/cooperations) only accept the lower taxes part, but for all intends and purposes this cuts the sustainability of the society short. US democrats lean too much on taxes for everything and the kitchen sink. Which also cuts the longevity of that society short.

As always, the way forward is through the middle: everybody (citizens/companies/cooperations) actually paying what one owns on taxes, will reduce government practically automatically. If that makes me a socialist in your eyes, so be it.

Now I grew up in a country with such a "live and let live"-mentality and government made sure that tax-revenue went to their intended destination. While no-one is/was really happy about paying taxes, in the end it was clear to anyone that the living standard from everyone (including the middle-class and the rich) went up.

Of course, I am aware that both societies with a cut-throat mentality and a live-and-let-live mentality have their positives and drawbacks, I just happen to think that the society with the live-and-let-live mentality is the most sustainable one over a longer period.

In the 2016 US election Clinton is not my favorite candidate, Sanders doesn't inspire me either. But compared against the republican candidates...either democratic candidate is a shining beacon of light and reason. And I truly believe that Donald Trump in office will bring the US to its knees economically. Just because his stances on any given subject bend and twist as a leaf of grass in the wind. Whatever you think of him, it is not a sign of vision or leadership...and it wont make America great again, no matter how much times Trump says this. Actually, the US was never as small/meager as Trump continuously states.
[/To the basement, here we go...]

967

General Software Discussion / Re: Web accessible Virtual Windows Environment for Collaborative testing of code

« Last post by Shades on April 02, 2016, 04:02 PM »

Some food for thought:
You usually need to rent your internet connection, then rent the room on whatever cloud hosting service you prefer, then pay for the licensed copy of whatever version of Windows you want to run in the cloud, then either spend time installing Windows at the cloud host or pay to have them do it for you. Then you need to get licensed copies of any software you want to use on the cloud computer and spend time uploading & installing & configuring these.

If you want to use a non-Server edition of Windows in combination with the RDP protocol (the most commonly used protocol)...you have the problem of only one person being able to connect to this cloud PC at any given moment (the last person that logs in automatically kicks out the previously logged in user). Server editions of Windows allow more than one RDP connections simultaneously. Be sure to have this part also covered with sufficient (extra) licenses from Microsoft.

And even if you did all that, it is still very likely you'll need to run specific collaboration software to allow more than one person to work on the same file(s) at the same time. Don't expect collaboration tools for anything else than Office documents to be cheap. Tools such as Atlassian's Confluence might be a good start for you.

My personal experiences with working on cloud-based PCs through Paraguayan ISP's aren't stellar. To have a better experience, make sure your internet connection has a very high upload speed, else your workflow is (significantly) slower than you would expect. Standard internet connections with high download limits are cheap, because these usually don't allow for fast uploads. ISP's usually do offer connections with high upload speeds, but at (much) higher cost.

Running software like the Interviewer tool you mention locally is a lot less (technical & financial) hassle. Especially if this whole collaboration thing you suggest is not used that often. Fast, Good, Cheap...choose two and hope those two are delivered as promised all the time (which isn't a given, I'm afraid).

968

N.A.N.Y. 2016 / Re: N.A.N.Y. 2016 Announcement

« Last post by Shades on April 02, 2016, 03:49 PM »

Here is a mug, shot...

969

Living Room / Re: Did my Android tablet unencrypt itself?

« Last post by Shades on April 02, 2016, 03:07 PM »

looks to me like an update of any kind of program or even android itself reverted to the default safety measure for login...meaning none. Nice, eh? All those applications demanding access to parts of the OS that aren't (or hardly) related to the functionality of the software.

Anyway, this is just the login procedure. At least in my limited experiences with android it is. Now if you used a different program to encrypt whatever content on your tablet, I don't think you should be worried.

However, if you want to test it properly, transfer any random encrypted file from your tablet to a location (PC/Mac/tablet/whatever) that hasn't been exposed in any way or form with the encryption scheme you used on your tablet. If you can read the file without problem on that location, assume that all your data on your tablet isn't encrypted. Perhaps it never was to begin with.

Without using digital certificates (PKI or better) and/or software such as TrueCrypt (don't know if an equivalent exists for android) I don't consider anything really encrypted.

970

General Software Discussion / Re: Run Bash on Ubuntu on Windows

« Last post by Shades on April 02, 2016, 08:01 AM »

Using Bash, etc. directly in Windows with Windows was already possible in 2009, though portable Ubuntu only worked in 32-bit editions of Windows.

971

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for spam filter

« Last post by Shades on March 31, 2016, 10:30 AM »

Most external mail providers allow for automatic forwarding of mail you received in the account they created for you (without putting the "FWD: " in front of the message title) to another external mail host. At least that has been my experience with external mail hosts so far.

If this is the case for you, you could forward it to a gmail account associated with your wife and let their SPAM filters do the work. These are quite decent. Your wife then only needs to pick up mail from the google mail account with the client she already has on her android device. This would be one of the easiest solutions, which won't be too taxing on the training part either.

On the other end of that scale is running your own mail server. This is what I do myself, using the Linux-based PostFix with the spam filter software that comes with it. But there are good Windows-based mail servers too. To my knowledge the open source hMail server has been favorably mentioned here several times by experienced Windows system administrators on this forum alone. Having no experience with this particular mail server software, I still think it is safe to assume that you can get additional spam filter software for it if the already available SPAM filters prove to be inadequate for your own situation.

Running your own server means you have a lot more power regarding mail...but with great power comes great responsibility, so be prepared if you choose that road. 
 

972

Living Room / Re: Wireless mice are hackable up to a city block away

« Last post by Shades on March 29, 2016, 11:57 AM »

Example:
If the hacker could find out at any given moment which page you have opened in a browser...all he/she needs to do is load up that page and literally retrace your steps with the data retrieved from your unencrypted mouse movements. That would give the hacker a very good idea of what you were doing and how to proceed on 'pawn'-ing your account(s).

Time is always a factor. It looks to me like people expect immediate breaches of their security, because a hacker swoops in, breaks security and robs you blind of information and/or money. But in my (arguably rotten) mind the most successful hacker is the one who has a bit of patience and gets to "know" the target by studying any type of data he/she can get from his/her target. That mouse data would sure help in case social engineering isn't an option.

I'm with Stoic Joker: no wireless <insert whatever such a device here> for me, and batteries are a headache. Not sure why people are so hung up about wireless this or that. The "convenience" factor doesn't outweigh the (possible) security breaches you subject yourself and/or your family to. Then again, I have been accused of being old-fashioned before here on this forum... 

973

General Software Discussion / Re: Are any of the "coders for hire" sites legit? Is anyone honest any more?

« Last post by Shades on March 21, 2016, 08:20 AM »

If a person without coding skills tells that it shouldn't be difficult to program whatever thing that they want, they either underestimate the work involved or they extremely underestimate the work involved.

Of course, the work that you get from this type of websites can easily be crap, but often it is also the case of a clear mismatch of expectations and amount of work. Add scope creep and you'll get those comments.

Best thing to do is very clearly specify what you want. And let the coder provide an estimate for that specification. If you or the coder make any change to the specification, re-estimate.

There are always two major problems with this:
1. You are not able to clearly write down a specification. By writing things down properly, you also get a much better idea about how much work that 'simple' idea/concept actually entails. And I am sure, most people have the wrong idea about how to write things down properly.
2. The coder provides a wrong estimate. He/she underestimates the work too, thinks too highly of their actual skills, etc.

What always helps:
Write short and concise.
Describe what you want to happen in case of success, describe what you want to happen in case of failure (in essence, write your testcases).
Use (mashed up) images to clarify whatever it is you want to happen.

Now both of you have a much clearer idea what needs to happen and there is much less chance of a mismatch between expectation and amount of work.

974

Living Room / Re: PC WILL NOT BOOT TO WIN 7 PRO WITH USB PLUGGED IN

« Last post by Shades on March 21, 2016, 07:43 AM »

With decent motherboard models from 4 to 5 years back you have the option in BIOS/UEFI to control which (type of) USB devices are enabled at boot time. At least the Asus models in my possession do. In case you have no option to work with the snap-in provided by 4wd.

Where this kind of USB options are located in the BIOS/UEFI differs (a bit) with each make and model of motherboard, so you will likely have to consult your manual. Or identify which motherboard model is inside your computer and see if the manufacturer still provides a downloadable manual for it.

Software that will help you identify what hardware is inside your computer is: SIW  (available as freeware & commercially licensed), but there are quite some alternatives if you so desire.

975

UrlSnooper / Re: [2.39.01] Fails installing Winpcap, even after manualling removing it

« Last post by Shades on March 07, 2016, 07:32 PM »

That would indicate there is an background service on your computer that prevents you from installing a new version of WinPcap.

The easiest step is to start your Windows PC in safe mode and check if the updated WinPcap installer can remove the old one.

Realize that the WinPcap software hooks into your software Windows requires, else it won't be able catch network traffic. This software needs to be able to work on a level very close to the networking hardware in your computer. Windows is not fond of this kind of software and required you to reboot the first time you installed it.

So, while I understand you don't like to reboot your computer, with installing and removing this kind of software you must. Because if you don't, you'll quickly find yourself in a mess similar to this one.

When in safe mode, if the updated installer cannot get rid of the old WinPcap installation, you will need to find out which background service blocks the installation.

Process explorer (part of the Sysinternals Suite) will be a great help. Dependency Walker is another very good investigation tool. While I don't think these tools are hard to use, you might think otherwise. Please read their online manuals, because you will be the one doing the legwork.

Next time you go on an "adventure" like this, Use a free tool such as RevoUninstaller (scroll to the bottom of that page to find the freeware version) for removing software from your computer. While the Windows control panel gives you the illusion of removing software, it often doesn't. With a tool like RevoUninstaller you will be amazed about the amount of crap that remains after Windows reported it removed software from your system.